Saturday, December 8, 2012

My Answers to the Christmas Geneameme

Randy Seaver challenged us to participate in a Christmas genea-meme posted by Cassmob in the blog, Family History Across the Seas, in which she asked questions relating to how we spend Christmas. Here are my answers. Like Randy, I put the questions in green, and my responses in red.

THE 2012 CHRISTMAS GENEAMEME

1.Do you
have any special Xmas traditions in your family? Not any longer. When I was small, we’d go to my maternal
grandparents’ house. (Grandma was born on Christmas Eve; Grandpa on Christmas
Day.) Grandpa and my uncles would spend the entire day playing
pinochle at the kitchen table, except when Grandma made them stop because we needed
the table for dinner. Uncle Ed K. (one of 3 Uncle Eds that I had) would film
the festivities. He always brought his 8 mm. movie camera. I wish I could see those
films; I don’t know if they still exist. On my paternal side, we usually went to my Uncle Ed Herrick's house for Christmas Eve. That was always
fun, with a lot of food and laughter and family. (See #5 below.) After my uncle died, one of his daughters started doing it. This year will be tough because my aunt died just a few weeks ago.

2.Is
church attendance an important part of your Christmas celebrations and do you
go the evening before or on Xmas Day?No; I'm not religious.

3.Did/do
you or your children/grandchildren believe in Santa?I did when I was young. Once my mom went out for the
evening. Wouldn’t you know it, Santa visited just 15 minutes later! ;) I don't have kids, so I don't have to worry about spoiling the magic.

4.Do you
go carolling in your neighbourhood? No.

5.What’s
your favourite Christmas music?Traditional
hymns. I don’t like the more modern songs. Now, if you’d ask which song was
most memorable, I’d say Bing Crosby singing “Mele Kalikimaka.” That album
was about the only Christmas album my uncle and aunt had, so we heard it a LOT.

6.What’s your favourite Christmas carol?O
Come All Ye Faithful. Or
Silent Night. Or O Holy Night. I hate to sing Christmas carols - they always
make me cry, and I can’t get through the song.

7.Do you
have a special Xmas movie/book you like to watch/read?I like to watch The
Bishop’s Wife (the original, with Cary Grant and Loretta Young… not the
Whitney Houston remake.) Sometimes I’d watch It’s a Wonderful Life and I'd yell at the screen, “George Bailey is such
a WIMP. He should stop putting aside his wishes and do whatever the heck he wants!” I
work in Hammond, Ind., the boyhood home of Jean Shepherd,
whose A Christmas Story is kind of
autobiographical. I watched the film once and (shhh... it may be heresy, but...) I don’t find it funny at all. I just don't get it.

9.Is your
main Christmas meal indoors or outdoors, at home or away? Always indoors. I’m single
with no kids, so if other family members are hosting dinner on Christmas, I may
attend. The older I get, the more I dislike big noisy gatherings, so sometimes I just veg out at home with
take-out and a bottle of wine. When my siblings and their
families and I get together to celebrate Christmas, it’s never ON Christmas; it’s whenever they
don’t have another holiday family commitment. It could be Christmas Eve; it could be New Year’s Day.

10.What
do you eat as your main course for the Christmas meal? For this year’s “family” Christmas, we’re
having pizza. We’ll have a few desserts. Low-key is
our motto. I really, really hate to cook, and my siblings don’t have the time
or energy.

11.Do you have a special recipe you use
for Xmas? No.

12.Does Christmas pudding feature on the
Xmas menu? Is it your recipe or one you inherited? We've never had Christmas pudding.

13.Do you have any other special
Christmas foods? What are they? My sister-in-law usually makes pizelles. There are some appetizers that I know I'll have at my cousin's house this year.

14.Do you give home-made food/craft for
gifts at Christmas? No.

15.Do you return to your family for Xmas
or vice versa? One of
my siblings usually hosts the family Christmas (which, as I mentioned, is never
on Christmas).

16.Is your Christmas celebrated
differently from your childhood ones? If yes, how does it differ? Yes, we now make use of gift cards and
the Internet. Plus our parents, grandparents and aunts/uncles are all gone, so we don't get together for a dinner like we used to.

22.Is Christmas spent at your home, with
family or at a holiday venue? Usually at home.

23.Do you have snow for Christmas where
you live? I live in
the American Midwest. Sometimes there is snow; sometimes not.
Last year we didn’t (it was a VERY mild winter. I love those!).

24.Do you have a Christmas tree every
year? Yes, a small one.

25.Is
your Christmas tree a live tree (potted/harvested) or an imitation? Imitation.
We had live trees when we were little, until Dad bought one of the early artificial
trees in the mid-1960s. It’s still in storage in the garage. It wasn’t one of those silver
aluminum trees like my maternal grandparents had, with
the turntable and that revolving light wheel. Ours was green and the branches' "needles" look like green cellophane.

26.Do you have special Xmas tree
decorations? I made a
bunch of decorations over the years but I’m throwing those out. There are a few
old ornaments from the trees of my childhood that I'm temporarily borrowing, and two photo ornaments of a dog
I used to have.

27.Which is more important to your
family, Christmas or Thanksgiving? As a religious event, neither. As far as the number of family
obligations, Thanksgiving for my family means fewer people to visit, no presents to buy, and
much less stress. But I imagine they would say Christmas is more important.

4 comments:

Thanks for participating Linda. It's so interesting to hear the different responses and see what people do and how they've celebrated (or not) Xmas over the years. Amazing that your grandparents had side-by-side Xmas birthdays.

We always have romantic ideas of snowy Christmases but miss the bit about all the sweeping etc ;-)

I, too, am single with no children, so I can relate to some of your comments. Luckily, though, my sisters and I can travel to spend Christmas together. I included both historical and modern answers to many of the questions in my response to Pauleen's meme: Our Family Christmas - Then and Now.